


Forget

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Gen, lil bit of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 11:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11126010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: "Can you write something where Bruce comes across Jason in an alley after his resurrection but before Talia took him in, and since he couldn’t talk at that time (& because he’s supposed to be dead) Bruce thinks it’s just a hallucination and just leaves him?"





	Forget

It had been a long time since Bruce was afraid of ghosts, mostly because they never left him alone. If this one seemed more real than usual, hey, it had been a rough day.

Always was, this time of year. 

April 27th. Bruce liked to think he was getting better— maybe some year he wouldn’t find himself lurking in Crime Alley on today, the anniversary of Jason’s death— but he wasn’t there yet.

It made sense. How was he supposed to _forget_ Jason? That was what it would take, Bruce knew, to leave the guilt behind. Every time Jason crossed his mind, it all came crashing back: the grief and shame and pain in his chest. Flashbacks, sometimes. Hallucinations.

He wasn’t particularly surprised to see his dead son lying on the cobblestones. It was bound to happen today. 

Bruce took a deep breath. It was time for another hell ride through his own subconsciousness. What would it be this time?

Older, he thought— this Jason looked older, the age he would be if he had lived. That was normal; Bruce spent a lot of time imagining Jason alive and growing up. This Jason looked like he had been on the street for a long time, and Bruce could explain that too; they’d met on this spot when Jason was young and homeless. Of course he was remembering that day. 

Bruce blinked away the image of Jason, small and defiant, sprinting towards the mouth of the alley with his tire iron. Who hit the Batman with a tire iron? Jason did. Jason was…

Well, Jason was dead. Jason had been extraordinary— brave, bright, explosive, kind— but he was gone, and the illusion on the pavement was just that: an illusion. A memory. Bruce’s mind playing tricks.

The punishment he deserved. He could feel it beginning like it always did, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his fingertips, his chest, rooting him to the stone underneath him until he couldn’t run— not that he should run. He hadn’t saved Jason. The least he could do was _feel_ it.

There were half-healed stitches running underneath Jason’s hair, out onto his forehead. Bruce remembered those cuts. They hadn’t been bleeding then, either. Dead bodies didn’t bleed for long. As soon as the heart stopped… Bruce hurriedly pushed that thought away. 

He had had a dream once, two weeks after Jason’s death. He remembered running towards the warehouse, faster than he had in reality, just fast enough to make it inside before the explosion; he saw Jason alive on the warehouse floor until the fire covered everything. His son wasn’t moving. Bruce stood above him as the building collapsed around them both and a massive section of wall fell towards Jason. It would have crushed him if Bruce hadn’t caught it.  

He spent the rest of the dream trapped underneath the stone, unable to move without dropping it, while the smoke crept towards Jason and blood pooled underneath him. It had been the smoke that killed him in the end (Bruce knew that), but if the smoke hadn’t…

The dream had felt real. This hallucination was worse. 

What else? Muddy shoes, tangled hair, a black jacket close to the one Jason always wore— close, but not exactly right. That part was odd. Bruce remembered that jacket. It was folded in the bottom of the second drawer in Jason’s old room, back at the manor at that moment, and Bruce knew what it looked like, didn’t he? Of course he did. That was Jason’s jacket. 

It wasn’t right. Everything else was perfect, good enough to be the real Jason lying in front of him, but the jacket— Bruce felt a sudden spike of panic rise in his chest— the jacket was wrong, and the hallucination wasn’t shifting to correct the mistake. Why didn’t it correct the mistake? Bruce knew that it should. He remembered everything exactly, didn’t he? 

Of course he did. Of course he remembered, how could he forget when Jason was his son, and he loved him, and he thought about him every day, all the time, every second he spent in the cave and the kitchen and the east corner of the library, and his bedroom was preserved exactly, wasn’t it? There were pictures of him on Bruce’s dresser. He spent every anniversary at Jason’s grave, at his favorite restaurant, on his favorite rooftop, at the spot where they met— in Ethiopia, once, and his vision still flickered every time he thought of that trip because he remembered every second, and it _hurt_. It still hurt. Of course it did.

No. He couldn’t be forgetting. It wasn’t possible. It was just the game, his own subconsciousness punishing him with the worst possibilities. And this was an impressive play. 

Breathe. Bruce needed to breathe. (Four exits, two sirens, one pair of footsteps behind him, far outside of the alley, fading as they went.) The vision wasn’t real. He was hallucinating. (Five cracks in the asphalt, three fire escapes, one leaking pipe. Two drops per three seconds.) He hadn’t forgotten Jason (ten seconds, twenty-one beats in his chest), and he was fine. That wasn’t his son, and he had to be nearing the end now, didn’t he? He’d gotten the point. It had to be over soon. 

Not-Jason opened his eyes and stared blankly into the distance. He didn’t seem to register Bruce at all. 

Oh God.

That was worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Always figured Bruce would count things to calm down ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
